At times, users of computing devices (such as desktop personal computers (PCs), notebook computers, wireless phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), game consoles, and so on) may experience operational problems that cause the user to obtain support from outside sources to resolve. Operational problems may include a wide range of problems some examples of which are missing files for applications (e.g., word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, note taking, and graphical design), registry errors, memory errors, hardware failures, driver errors and so on. Users may not have the sophistication or technical understanding to determine the source of a particular problem and/or to solve the problem.
One traditional approach used to fixing operational problems involved unsophisticated users placing technical support calls and directly interacting with support personnel (such as a friend or technical support professional) to troubleshoot an operational problem with a computing device. The support personnel, via direct interaction (e.g., a phone call), might offer a number of items to try and guide the user through troubleshooting steps. Thus, a lengthy back and forth conversation with support personnel may be involved to identify and solve the particular operational problem for a single client. Further, this traditional support technique may be repeated for each client and each time a problem occurs or reoccurs.
In other cases, the unsophisticated users may not even recognize or may ignore operational problems which adversely effect performance of the computing device and might contribute to negative impressions of the providers of the computing device, and hardware or software for the device. Thus, the traditional approach to resolving operational problems may be frustrating and time consuming for users, inefficient and costly to those providing support to large number of users, and may adversely impact the reputation of providers of devices hardware, and software when problems go unattended.